Striking Images Show How Rising Sea Levels Could Swallow Up Global Landmarks

The Sydney Opera House could be about to experience a more extreme form of water frontage, according to climate projections on rising sea levels.

Climate Central has put together a set of stunning visuals showing the effects of just a two-degree and four-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures on sea levels, setting alarm bells ringing as various world icons disappear underwater.

The Opera Bar outside the Sydney Opera House would disappear almost entirely if global temperatures rose by four degrees, with just the tips of sun umbrellas poking out of the water.

Grab the red slider bar to see before and after impressions.

The fact your Friday afternoon, highly-Instagrammable #WorkDrinks are under threat should be more than enough to spur you into immediate action, but let's take a look at a few more projections.

Shanghai? Pretty well flooded.

Financial workers on Wall Street in New York City would find it hard to get to work.

Commuters and tourists in London, too, would have to trade in walking shoes for waders under the nightmare scenario.

Climate Central said the projections were based on peer-reviewed research published on October 12 in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. The organisation is a collaboration between scientists and journalists, featuring board members from Princeton, Stanford and Yale universities, among others.